Do You Like My Blog?

Sign up now for my FREE email newsletter to get updates about new stories, gear reviews, and expert tips.

Welcome to The Big Outside!

Hi, I'm Michael Lanza, creator of The Big Outside and former Northwest Editor at Backpacker magazine. Sign up for my free email newsletter in the blue box above. Click my photo to learn more about me and my blog. Click on Subscribe Now! in the main menu (top right) to get full access to all of my stories on America's best backpacking, hiking, and outdoor adventures. And click on Ask Me in the main menu to learn how I can help you plan your next trip.

Comments From Readers

“Your blog has given me inspiration for so many of my family’s backpacking trips. Thanks for all you do—it certainly makes a difference in our lives, and it’s reassuring knowing that we have such a knowledgeable resource to turn to when we plan our trips into the backcountry with our kids.”
—Nancy

“Thank you for providing inspiration and ideas for my recent outdoor adventures, as well as countless hours of entertainment reading your blog posts.”
—Brad

“Thank you for all of your help in planning my trip. We had a great experience and enjoyed every moment. I am hopeful that my kids will appreciate it even more as they grow older.”
—Sandra

Support The Big Outside

Do you like my blog? Please help me continue producing the stories you read at The Big Outside by making a donation in any amount—$5, $10, $25, $50, $100 or more—using this Support button. Thank you for supporting The Big Outside.

I am a college student at Franklin Pierce University, and I have a couple questions I’d like to ask you. I have been enjoying your articles and website and your book, Before They’re Gone, and really appreciate the work and writing that you create! I am also an enthusiastic adventurer and love doing much smaller excursions, but I am looking to tackle longer, more rigorous hikes. I was wondering if you had any suggestions for backpacking trips and dayhikes in New England. Continue reading →

The imminent end of summer always feels a little melancholy. After all, it marks the close of the prime season for getting into the mountains. But it also signals the beginning of a time of year when many mountain ranges become less crowded just as they’re hitting a sweet zone in terms of temperatures, the lack of bugs, and fall foliage color. Autumn also stands out as an ideal season for many canyon hikes, with moderate temperatures and even some stunning color.

From Yosemite to the White Mountains (lead photo, above), Grand Canyon to Grand Teton, the Great Smokies to the Olympics, and more, here are 10 of my favorite backpacking trips that are best served up in fall.Continue reading →

As we near the top of Mount Flume in New Hampshire’s White Mountains, the first of nine summits we hope to reach today, a light shower begins falling. It seems a less-than-ideal portent near the front end of one of the longest and hardest days of hiking any of us has ever undertaken—especially for three people somewhere between two and three decades past their hiking prime. But this only strikes us as one more in a long list of reasons to laugh at the absurdity of our self-imposed mission: to see whether we still have the stuff to knock off a dayhike that few mountain walkers would even contemplate. In that context, the arrival of the rain we knew was forecasted comes all in a day’s foolishness.

As Ralph Waldo Emerson once opined, “It is one of the blessings of old friends that you can afford to be stupid with them.” Continue reading →

We started up the Daniel Webster Trail by the light of headlamps at a time of day that guaranteed we’d have the mountain to ourselves for hours: 3:30 a.m. My head had that squeezed, hungover feeling from not enough sleep; the four hours we grabbed on the floor of my friend Mark’s van the night before fell at least three hours short of rejuvenating. But we didn’t have the luxury of sleeping in. We were embarking on a one-day, 20-mile “Death March” across New Hampshire’s Presidential Range. And making our objective all the more lunatic, we had a bus to catch that afternoon—with nine summits between us and that bus stop. Continue reading →

In looking at your website (super nice by the way!), looks like you and your friend just did part of the hike I am planning! We are planning on starting at Crawford Notch and traveling South to Dartmouth. It looks like about 96 miles. Continue reading →